Why do people hate Microsoft Windows 8 ?
Are these changes, on balance, good? For many, who favor the familiar, they seem too dramatic to be. As for myself, I either don't mind them or actively like some of them.
What is being lost in all of this is why Microsoft did this. Like Apple, they know the era of the PC is winding down, to be supplemented and outpaced by tablets and phones. Both Apple and Microsoft (and, to a lesser extent, Google, with its ChromeOS) are thus trying to bridge the gap and making their mobile and desktop UIs and OSes converge.
Google puts everything in the cloud--Android syncs settings and data between phones and tablets, and does this to an extent with Chrome and ChromeOS.
Apple is right now making the ecosystem for Mac and iOS more and more similar with the stores, among other things. And in terms of UI, small tells like having the Notification Center, iMessage, and even the reversed scrolling clearly point in that direction.
Microsoft, however, has long lagged behind. And so this current play with Windows 8 tries to throw a Hail Mary pass. The UI is substantially similar across tablets, phones, desktop, and even XBox. Settings are synced via the cloud. Apps programmed for Windows 8 can be far more easily ported to tablets and phones because of similar APIs and libraries.
It's in some ways very revolutionary for Microsoft, which has far too often gone for a much more iterative pattern. The new UI is simply the most visible, most colourful part, the first thing anybody interacts with, and so is what's causing the early distaste.
It's not the next Windows Vista, no matter what you hear. Unlike Vista, the underpinnings of the OS are solid. If, however, you look at the sales numbers and see that they are low... remember, PC sales have been falling for a while, and that's precisely why they're making this play.
